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Done in pursuit of Doing It Orion Style: My three intrepid explorers, preparing for the first crewed launch of the glorious SLS! Pad view. Since this is the first crewed test, I'm starting with a little pad abort... All clear so far... Fairing and LES jettison. Drogues out... Popped the mains. Success! Reverted to the pad. SSME ignition! SRBs ignited; up, up and away. Nearing Max-Q, and... Whoops, aborting again! Couldn't resist doing a max-Q abort. Dropping nicely. Nominal splashdown. All right, for real this time. Majestic to be sure! Quite a clip. Heating up and leaning over. SRB jettison! High enough now to get rid of the LES. If you look closely, you'll see that I used a three-segment fairing. Burning very gingerly now. As usual, the SLS can make LKO easily on the core. EUS separation and ignition! Fairing jettison. Only a tiny burn to get up into LKO. Circularized! Orion's SM has solar array deployment. Now, here's where it gets messy. The current NASA plan calls for the EUS to place the entire stack -- DSG component & Orion + SM -- in a high Earth orbit with a period of approximately 24 hours. After this orbit, Orion will separate from the stack and enter its own free-return trajectory, while the EUS places the DSG component in a lunar flyby. I had to plot a couple of orbits ahead to get the timing right. Burning to raise Ap. Done! You can see that the second node appears, after this orbit. Set up for a free-return. Hanging out at apoapse! Orion separates on the way back in. Lost the old maneuvering node, but that's okay. Putting Orion where it needs to go. Extending solar arrays on the Power & Propulsion Module as I swing around the dark side of Kerbin. Setting up the escape-trajectory flyby for EUS disposal. First clear shot of the Deep Space Gateway Power & Propulsion module. Note docking port for refueling, hexagonal probe core, and "airlock" up top for experiment storage, as desired. Orion flying free with the EUS in the background. Finally back at Pe, and burning for the flyby! Switched over to Orion; burning for the free-return. Free-return complete! Separation from the EUS. The EUS will continue to a munar flyby and escape. Testing the engines on the DSG. In reality, the four smaller ion engines will be on special gimbal arms, but KSP doesn't have that capability. Here's what the current disposal trajectory looks like. Firming up the flyby. In reality, the DSG will be assembled in a halo orbit around L2, but since there are no Lagrange points in KSP, a polar Mun orbit will have to do. The Kermans are excited for their flyby! Setting up my node for munar capture. Thanks to the scaled-up ion thruster, I can do the capture burn easily. Orion is inside the Mun's SOI. Nearing Munar Pe; starting to throttle up. Full capture burn! Capture complete. Closest approach on free return. Goodbye, Mun! Set up a node to fix inclination. Inclination fixed! Getting ready to lower Munar Pe. What a beautiful shot! Reached my terminal orbit. Meanwhile, Orion is coming back in toward Kerbin. Service Module jettison. Starting to get entry heating; SM visible in the background. Took quite a long time, really. Through re-entry; drogues popped. Jettisoned heatshield. Mains popped, drogues cut! Splashdown! That's a wrap.
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